Supply Chain Innovation

Balsu

Supply Chain Innovation

Every summer, tens of thousands of seasonal workers migrate to agriculture production areas across Turkey. A majority of these workers are from the southeastern Turkey and they travel as family groups moving from crop to crop for six to eight months each year. Often, the children work alongside their migrant parents, contributing to the household income, but at the expense of their personal development.

The worker demographic profiling report presented here was produced to support the work of the project “Partnership to Reduce Child Labor and Forced Labor in Imported Agricultural Products: Piloting the USDA Guidelines in the Hazelnut Supply Chain in Turkey,” conducted by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) as part of its cooperative agreement with the US Department of Labor.

In August 2016, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) conducted independent assessments in the Turkish hazelnut supply chain shared by three FLA affiliates – Nestlé, and its two strategic first-tier suppliers, Balsu and Olam Progida which together account for 100 percent of Nestlé’s hazelnut volume in Turkey. All three companies are affiliated with the FLA and have monitoring and remediation programs in place. Based on both internal and external monitoring results, company affiliates must develop and implement remediation actions leading to sustainable changes.

In August 2015, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) conducted independent assessments in the Turkish hazelnut supply chain shared by three FLA affiliates – Nestlé, and its two strategic first-tier suppliers, Balsu and Olam Progida which together account for 100 percent of Nestlé’s hazelnut volume in Turkey.

In August of 2014, the FLA conducted a series of assessments on a supply chain in Turkey shared by three FLA affiliates -- Nestlé, and two of its first-tier hazelnut suppliers, Balsu and Olam, which together account for 99 percent of Nestlé's hazelnut volume. A team consisting of both FLA assessors and external assessors visited a total of 70 hazelnut gardens in 2014, interviewing 437 workers about their working conditions.